BEIJING, July 5 (Xinhuanet) -- Italian police arrested two officials with Italy's military intelligence agency on Wednesday on suspicion of helping the CIA in the alleged kidnapping of a terrorism suspect in Milan, judicial sources said.

    Marco Mancini, director of a division of the military intelligence agency, and another official with the agency, had been arrested, a statement from the Milan's prosecutor's office said. No further details were immediately available.

    An Italian court has also issued arrest warrants for 22 suspected U.S. agents over the abduction, but no Italians had been sought until now.

    It is the first Italian officials that have been linked to the 2003 abduction of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar.

    Prosecutors allege Abu Omar was subsequently flown, via Italian and German military bases, to Egypt, and once there, tortured.

    The top European human rights watchdog, the Council of Europe says the military airport of Ciampino near Rome and the Aviano military base in northern Italy were used as stopovers for flights that transferred Islamist terror suspects illegally kidnapped on European soil to secret CIA prisons. Enditem

(Agencies)